Oh, the Humanities!!!

[AdminAssistant]

One of my professors sent me an e-mail earlier this week. Basically, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences did a giant study of the state of humanities in American education from elementary to post-graduate studies.

Website: http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/

This is from the press release (on the website):

What Do the Humanities Indicators Tell Us?

- The picture of adult literacy in the U.S. is one of polarization. Among Western industrialized nations, we rank near the top in the percentage of highly literate adults (21%) but also near the top in the proportion who are functionally illiterate (also 21%).

- Public debate about teacher qualifications has focused mainly on math and science, but data reveal that the humanities fields suffer an even more glaring dearth of well-prepared teachers. In 2000, the percentage of middle (29%) and high school (37.5%) students taught by a highly qualified history teacher was lower than for any other major subject area. The definition of “highly qualified” is a teacher who has certification and a post-secondary degree in the subject they teach.

- Humanities faculty are the most poorly paid. They also have a higher proportion of part-time, non-tenured positions compared to their counterparts in the sciences and engineering. But almost half of humanities faculty indicate that they are “very satisfied” with their jobs overall.

- Since the early 1970s, the number of Americans who support the banning of books from the public library because they espouse atheism, extreme militarism, communism, or homosexuality decreased by at least 11 percentage points, although still from 26% to 34% of the public would support banning some type of book. In the case of books advocating homosexuality, the decline was a particularly significant 20 percentage points.

- Recent federal legislation identifies certain languages as “critical need languages” (Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, and Uzbek, among others), but the data show these languages are rarely studied in colleges and universities. At the same time, there has been a substantial increase in the number of students studying Chinese.

-Charitable giving to arts and cultural organizations grew between the mid-1990s and early 2000s before leveling off. But little of public or private sector funding for the humanities goes to academic research. This trend undermines both academia and the public since public institutions rely on humanities scholars to provide much of the knowledge on which these activities are based.

- The number of American adults who read at least one book in the previous 12 months decreased from 61% to 57% in the decade between the early 1990s and the early 2000s. The greatest rate of decline (approximately 15%) occurred among 18-to-24-year-olds.

I find all this pretty abhorrent. "No Child Left Behind" pushes 'quantifiable' studies like math and science so much that there's no time for language, social studies, and CREATIVITY. Are we turning kids into little robots with no interest in art? Who don't have access to their imaginations?

And reading - I mean, we know that not a lot of Americans read regularly, but I would like to know what they're reading (fiction, non-fiction, smut?)

Thoughts?

[Greenday]

I don't know if it's really us being pushed away from arts and stuff like that. Seeing as art classes and music were mandatory throughout middle school, grade school, and high school in my area (all public schools), I can't say we were pushed away from it. I think it's just that a lot less people are genuinely interested in the arts. In this day and age, it's all about making money, and your chances of making good cash while being a sociologist or a painter etc. etc. are drastically smaller than being in business and accounting and the sciences.

[DesignFox]

Greenday has a point- in my area as well, humanities classes were mandatory as part of the curriculum.

However, having been an art student, I can attest to the fact that all the arts programs were insufficiently funded and woefully underappreciated.

My high school's marching band had well over 100 kids involved. Yet, when budgets came up, we were the ones whose funding got put on the chopping block first (or the one year where they conveniently "forgot" that we needed a new piece of equipment).

Our drama club? The school so underfunded us that we saved the SCREWS after each set construction because we could barely afford the materials we needed. (we had to basically fund raise for anything we needed- and one year, my father donated a truck full of lumber and supplies so we could finish the set for the spring musical) The lighting system was damaged from a fire in the school a year before I became a freshman- it was never replaced. We fixed what dimmers we could, and figured the rest out.

Just a couple examples.

[AdminAssistant]

Exactly DesignFox - but they would never DARE touch the athletic program. hmph.

And this is more than just art - it's history, literature, social studies, civics - all of these things are VITAL and just as important as math and science.

Example - At my college, which is a very large, well-funded state university, the GTA's in the Humanities make HALF what GTA's in math, science, and engineering do for exactly the same work. I have to prepare lectures and discussions, grade papers and tests, assist my professor, wrangle with my students, all the same things that they do. And yet my work is given a much lower value. It's infuriating.

[AFPheonix]

That's unfortunate, because the things you teach in a humanities class really reinforces those concepts the student learns in core classes, like writing, critical thinking, math, etc.

[daleduke17]

That's unfortunate, because the things you teach in a humanities class really reinforces those concepts the student learns in core classes, like writing, critical thinking, math, etc.

Silly person, you....no one wants kids to be critical thinkers, that means the children could question the leaders.

[AFPheonix]

Perhaps. I do remember that even in my college classes, more than a few professors bemoaned that students our age didn't ask hard questions, didn't question the status quo.....
I guess it had already begun.

[kiwi]

________________________________________
I remember doing my student exchange when I was 16 and being astounded at how much stuff the people my age didn’t know

I was taught the periodic table at 13 along with basic organic chemistry. The people at my school didn’t even have to know the first 20 elements. they were just beginning to cover that at 16 and had never even been shown it before

then I took a WORLD history class and they were covering amendments to the constitution, I asked the teacher what countries they had learned about (I had covered Russia, Palestine/Israel, Ireland and Tudor England the year before) and he kind of looked at me and asked why I would think they would be covering other countries in his class.... I guess stupid me thinking a world history would actually cover some of the world outside America

the only thing I struggled with was English class and that’s because we were studying Zora Neale Hurston and her books are written in Ebonics.... holy hell is that tough for a kid who’s entire education to black culture was the colour purple movie and the fresh prince of Bel Air, they didn’t know what a adverb was or a pronoun was though

even math my worst subject, they were well behind us, just stating quadratic and linear equations

and this was a private academy that was a feeder school into ivy league (my prom date went on to Pepperdine and my exchanges buddy got into Harvard while we were there)

I got excellent marks that my school wouldn’t credit me for (I had to make up all the work I had missed when I got back to school and almost failed the year because of it) it really made me appreciate my school when I got back to it though.